Deep Thoughts

When you can't find your weight at the gym on the rack because the girl sitting next to you is using it, you know that you haven't been to the gym in way too long.

Deep Thoughts

When you think that a good way to "kick start" your training is by doing the Quad Dipsea, you know that you have some serious, serious issues. Regardless of my mental state, the good news is that I have friends who have just as many issues as I do and sure enough, the weekend of the Quad Dipsea, Shibby and I lined up for 28.4 miles of what was certain to be a lot of pain.
The best thing about the Quad is when it is held. Every weekend, Thanksgiving weekend. I will never, head into the Quad hungry. Thanks to a seriously good meal provided by my new father in law, I was fat, but happy and ready to run.
The game plan this year was three pronged. 1. Don't get hurt. 2. Finish 3. Be able to move and hopefully continue the training by early next week. In the past the goal was 5:30, or if I was feeling really, really ambitious, 5:00 (which has never happened, but is still a goal).
So, there we were about to embark on my longest run since my failed 12 hour run around Chrissy Field (it lasted 3 hours and a whopping 17 miles before I ended up curled in bed w/ a fever and something resembling a mean flu). That run was in Oct. so if you take that out, my training for a 28.4 mile hilly run was a 1 hour run that I do around the Presidio, which I had done about 4 times in the past 4 months. Not good.
We started off and I'm not going to lie, it was fun. Knowing that I was in horrible shape, and knowing that Shibby was in horrible shape we went slowly, really, really slowly, but it was a ton of fun. I got to talk to people, watch my friends tear it up in the front (Taylor, Jon and Matt) and all in all, I enjoyed the first half. Then, well then a complete lack of training caught up to me and it was painful.
You can't fake 28.4 hilly miles, you just can't do it. Luckily I had my inov8 Roc-Lites on because my feet were the only part of me that was comfortable. Even if I had wanted to drop my buddy Shibby and sprint the last half, it just wasn't going to happen. I was amazed that you could move this slowly and still get cramp and have you legs hurt, but sure enough, I proved that you could.
Good news, I accomplished 2 out of my 3 goals. Bad news, I wasn't doing a lot of training after that. Ouch...

Volume 2 of the Navigation Challenge Book from AR Navigation Supplies.

Volume 2 of the very popular Table Top Adventure Race and Navigation Challenge Book from AR Navigation Supplies is now available for order.  The latest edition is designed as an Expedition Length Race and includes some more difficult challenges involving triangulation, magnetic declination and route choice as well as speed, time and distance calculations.  You will also find the traditional UTM and bearing plotting techniques found in the first edition.  

Volume 2 contains 12 navigation challenges in an Expedition Race format based in the Lake Tahoe region of Northern California.  The goal is to find your way around each map by following the rules of travel, plotting the route and answering the questions presented for each CP.  If you get lost there is a help section that will guide you through the common navigation techniques and adventure racing terms to get you back on track.

The book is designed to allow navigators to practice and improve their navigation skills while at home, in the office or traveling.   All you need is a compass or protractor, UTM tool, a pencil and you're ready for a table top adventure that will test your skills and improve your navigation regardless of your current expertise.  

Challenge your friends to the table top competition and see who should be the team navigator at the next race, it may surprise you.

For all the details on the Navigation Challenges and a preview of the first volume follow the link below.  

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/product_pages/nav_challenge/nav_challenge.html

Great news for Adventure Racers in Texas and Colorado

Great news for Adventure Racers in Texas and Colorado. AR Navigation
Supplies products are now available from MapsCo stores. This includes
the Basic Roamer AR both US and Metric versions, the Rotating Mountain
Bike Map Holder, the Waterproof Pedometer and the new Table Top
Adventure Race and Navigation Challenge book.

MapsCo has stores in Addison TX, Austin TX, Dallas TX, Denver CO, Fort
Worth TX and San Antonio TX. A list of all MapsCo store addresses
and contact information can be found here: http://www.mapsco.com/stores.aspx

Please support MapsCo as they help us bring the tools for adventure
racing to their stores and the local racing community.

MapsCo can be contacted at 1-800-781-4MAP or at www.mapsco.com

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com

Team AR Navigation Supplies/ INOV-8 Win Overall at SF Oyster Race

Team AR Navigation Supplies/INOV-8 took the co-ed division and the
overall win at the 2009 San Francisco Oyster Urban Adventure Race on
September 26th.

Follow the link below to the full story and pictures.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

INOV-8 by AR Navigation Supplies wins the 2009 Ocean Blue Adventure Race

Team INOV-8 by AR Navigation Supplies has won the Ocean Blue Adventure Race in Half Moon Bay on July 11th 2009. This win makes it 3 in a row at this classic event.

The full story can be found at http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

Tahoe Rim Trail 100

Well, it’s official, I now have a DNF (that means Did Not Finish mom) in an ultra, which is sad, but I’m pretty sure I made the right decision. From all of the comments that I've gotten back from friends and family, and after reading about what occurred to me on the web, it's looking like I had hyponatremia. I'd recommend reading about it as I had always associated it w/ fraternity pranks and people running a marathon really slowly while drinking a lot of water in the heat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia Now, on to the race!

The race started off great, the week up at altitude was a HUGE help. I noticed immediately that my Hear Rate (HR) was nice and low and I was able to keep a good steady pace. The other thing I noticed was that my climbing was much stronger then it normally is. Clearly the training program that Coach Manning had put me on was paying dividends, and I was pretty fired up to be able to see the results in a race. The only issue that I was having was my stomach. Not a side cramp, but a weird sort of feeling in the bottom left of my stomach that something was off. Kind of crampy, kind of bloaty (apparently crampy and bloaty are not real words) but other then that, things were going really well, until I hit the first weigh in of the race. There I realized I had gained 5 pounds, which isn’t good. I started the race at 169 (I just weighed myself and I’m currently at162.5) and now I weighed 174. The normal logic here is to drink more water, take less salt, (or so I thought it was) so that’s what I started to do.

Still, cruising along and way ahead of schedule. I’m just crushing the race at this point, and my legs feel good. I was wearing the Roc-Lite 285's, and very excited about the shoes. I’m drinking a TON of water. We’re talking 40oz between aid station (which were about 1.5-2 hours apart) and I’ve stopped the salt tablets (except for when I feel a tinge from a cramp coming on) but the weird thing is, I’m not sweating a lot (and it was HOT out there) and I’m not peeing as much as I should be, which has me worried, but not super concerned. I hit the 26.3 miles in 5:39 which is about 20 minutes faster then I thought I was going to, and I fell good, minus the stomach.

The next 25 miles are similar to the first 25 miles except faster and I gain more weight. I’m now weighing in at 178 pounds (like I said, my post race weight is now 162.5) so I’ve put on 9lbs in the race, which is starting to draw concern. In races they have you weigh in to protect yourselves. Everyone has a wrist-band on and you have +/- 3%, 5%, and 7%. At 7% weight gain/loss you get pulled from the race and I’m at 5.5% weight gain and with no clue what to do. I’m drinking water, I’m barely taking any salt, but I can’t drop weight to get back to normal. My stomach feels a lot better, my HR is really low for the pace that I’m running, everything feels good. So good in fact that I crush the second 25 miles. I hit the halfway mark so early that Shawna/Shibby aren’t there! I’ve outrun my crew!!! I’m 50 miles into the race in 11:03, but still weighing 178.

The good news is that Shawna and Shibby show up in less then 5 minutes and I now get to run the next 26.3 miles with Shawna, which I’m really excited about. Legs are tired, but nothing that shouldn’t be expected after 50 miles of running. The next 10 miles, everything is still good. At the Tunnel Creek aid station 61 miles, one of the volunteers tells me to take potassium, and that should help things out and I should drop weight, so I knock back a banana and take off running. I’m still moving pretty well, and w/ some bananas in me, I pee 2x in the loop, but definitely starting to slow down. I do the Red House Loop in 2 hours and the volunteers tell me how good of a time that is, but unfortunately, it’s the last thing I really remember.

From 67.3 miles to 76.3 I basically have no recollection of what happened. It’s the same feeling as when you drink too much, wake up the next morning and wonder what happened from 10pm – 1am. Yup, that was me, except none of the benefits that comes with booze! If you really want more details about that part, then ask Shawna as she was there the whole time to make sure I didn’t fall off the course (apparently I wasn’t walking in a straight line) and basically making sure nothing bad happened to me. I hit the 67.3 mile marker in 16:34 minutes. It then took me 3:10 minutes to go 9 miles. I was basically doing a zombie walk for 3 hours, or so I was told.

Hit the 75 mile marker where they have a BIG aid station, tent, cot, etc. and still have no real recollections of things, until waking up from a quick 10 min nap and feeling better. I basically remember everything from that point on. I got up, and Shibby and I were going to head out to finish the course. I still had 14 hours, so no matter how slowly I was moving, I could make the cut-off. Luckily, after about 500 yards down the course, I came to my senses and stopped. It didn’t make sense to me (even in my delirious state) to keep going. I’ve already done 2-100 mile races, and to suffer for a 8+ hour walk just to say I finished this one didn’t make sense, so I stopped the race and earned my first DNF. After hearing back from friends, and much more experienced ultra-runners then me, that decision, probably kept me out of the hospital.

The Tahoe Rim ultra is a really great ultra to run. The course is beautiful for 90% of the race, the Red-Barn loop is just a mean, mean bit to run (but they do call it a taste of hell on the web-site, so you are warned) but the rest of it is really pretty. I don't run with a camera in races, but the views along the trail are breath-taking at time. The race is all on dirt, so no cement to pound the knees and at just under 20k in climbing/descending you can really run a lot of the course. Be warned though, it is surprisingly hard to finish (in all my ultras and adventure races, this is only my second DNF, so I agree!) In 2006 there was a 63% finish rate and in 2008 there was an even lower 58%, so like I said, it's surprisingly hard. The aid stations are all well stocked and as is the case in most ultras, the volunteers were awesome. They had an Irish themed aid station with Darts (and an award for the best score, so practice up) and a Mexican station with Corona! I would definitely recommend the race to anyone looking for an ultra, but I might hold off if it's going to be your first attempt at a 100 miler and start with something a bit easier. The combination of the altitude and heat (it was over 90 this year) seems to create a large number of DNF's, but it's not the fault of the race for that!

HUGE thanks to Shawna, Shibby and Jon for helping out! Great crew, great pacing, and an even bigger thanks to Shawna for walking 26.3 very slow miles with me while watching me deteriorate in front of her AND not yelling at me to stop.